Lightning Source Complaints & Reviews - Lightning Source Service

Lightning Source

Lightning Source Service

Lightning Source is terrible at customer service and completing a project for their clients on time. Rude, bad attitude, and ignorant. Here are the main problem employees Yolanda Hall (confused), Heather Henderson (clueless), Cassandra Walker (lazy), Dana Sanders (a real bitch), & Leslie Sullivan (really stupid) Do yourself a favor publish your book as an ebook, this company single handed will kill print books.

Comments

No way! I work with Leslie all the time and she has taken care of us with excellence. I even needed a rush on submitting a title and as well ordering copies of it once approved to meet a deadline of sales for a local conference all the way on the west coast. Did a great job and still met my deadline!

I often handle all self published book designs & layout for my client - who happens to be a prolific writer! Sadly I just happened by a most underhanded marketing arm twist by LSI. They claimed the files should be printed to postscript and then distilled in Adobe. Apart from the fact that this is so 1980s, apparently they ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN DO THIS! So they sent back all the files and some lady affiliated to them reprimands my client for not patronising her anymore for formatting! I think they're a scam...and their work flow (Laser printing) is so dated and inefficient, not the least the totally flopped sub-minus customer service you get for all your trouble.

I used to work for LSI between 2006 and 2008. In 2008, I resigned from my job, two weeks before they laid off all American citizens on the company floor, and replaced them with uneducated illegal immigrants. That may be a major source of the problem.

LS at times is very stressfull. It's a shame my books are selling before I have started to market or advertise them.

If your requirements are not common yet still under their contract / manual but "computer says no" then that's bad luck no matter how polite or patient, eventually you might have to complain to get things done. I can only speak for myself, if you are a big publisher or a publisher with 1000 poorly written books with awfull covers that takes any authors money then you might be OK.

A recent post went up on a blog that outlined what LSI did to a publishing company. You can read it here: http://www.aforcg.blogspot.com/ It is clear that LSI does not have a clue with customer serivce, nor do they feel they need to. Their Big Biz Bully mentality is ever so clear in this post. If anyone else has lost money due to them, please post on the blog so a class action lawsuite can exist.

I have been with LS for four years. I had been selling 3 or 4 books every quarter. Not much but I was satisfied. Out of the blue I got a shipment of 57 of my books freshly printed and an invoice for $1012.77! After my jaw hit the floor, I called them up and said WTF? According to them these are returns. AND according to them, for 4 years, I had apparently been pricing my books BELOW printing cost!!! W.T.F???? I checked my pub comps and correspondence and none of what they claimed adds up in terms of the numbers. I disputed their outrageous claim and with every reply to their request for payment, a week or two went by. Hmm. You would think if a printer is owed this amount they would be aggressive in calling and following up with me. This is an unbelievable situation and it is still going on. I will keep this board updated when I can.

I sent my application and paperwork in over a month ago. I was told it was lost. I have re-sent this paperwork 2 times now along with a detailed letter of complaint. I was going with LS because I was told they were the best and most professional. I have clients waiting on my book!! Their lack of customer service is costing me money.
Can anyone else recommend a god POD? I'm at truecrimebook.com. Thanks!

The day I've been waiting for has finally arrive, I can now tell LS to stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Not only did I receive terrible customer service over the years, I've had to deal to poor print quality from them, with customers calling to say they received books where the print was so light in some pages they couldn't make it out. This QC issue was never their fault and always some thing we did based on how the files we submitted to them was created, therefore if we wanted replacements to be sent to the customer we needed to pay for the second round to books.
After their last round of c*** customer service I was finally able to locate another POD printer, that not only has better print quality, but came in at the same price per unit as LS. their slightly higher set-up cost (~$20) was offset their lower almost every else cost (unit cost, file change fees (~$20).
My company has been doing business with them for years and place orders for books on a regular weekly basis, and they still treat us to the worst customer service I've had to deal with out of all our vendors. They had yet to provide any helpful service without first having us to compile actual proof they are at fault or it is something their contract requires them to do.

The customer service offered by Lightening Source is SO BAD they could also be a government department. They keep sending me proofs which have unacceptably low print quality with blurred text through the book and seem unable to tell me why the book looks like its been checked in a puddle. I keep telling that the proof is unacceptable and there response is that they don't know what's going and that I should fix. How can I fix it if they don't tell me what the problem is. They have completely screwed a deadline, lost me a lot of sales and refuse to take responsibility for their inability to print text correctly. And this is now my third horrific experience with them.

I have not received half a dozen monthly publisher checks from Lightningsource. After exchanging about 40 emails they claimed that they had been sent and cashed. I believe that this is not possible as they would have been made out to my company and were never received or cashed by my company. They seem to be trying to drive publishers into a new company that they have set up with a commission structure about 3 times higher for them than Lightningsource. Is anyone aware of a class action against Lightningsource for violation of intellectual property rights by non payment of publishers?

Their customer service rates somewhere around the bottom of a mud puddle. I ordered hard cover and paperback books nearly three months ago. They arrived 2 weeks after they were supposed to, and all of the hard cover books had glue issues causing the title page to bunch or pull from the rest of the book. I contacted my service rep and had to pay to send some of the books back for "quality control review". Then, I had to hound the rep for a) a reply on if she received the submitted claim form, b) whether or not the books were getting reprinted, and c) a tracking number. Each of these information requests took 3-5 days for a reply.
The next batch of books they sent me were all printed off center with big white lines around an otherwise full-color book page. It's a bit noticeable when there's a giant line against purple or blue, people! I submitted that paperwork a few days ago and still haven't received a reply. When calling today to ask if they even received it, I was told, "The only person who can help you is your rep, and if it's not broke, then don't fix it." I'm not sure what qualifies as 'not broke' about a couple hundred books I can't sell with an author signing coming up and no product for it.
Thanks for nothing.

It's run like a Soviet government administrative department, and their online dashboard is not much better, but they do deliver. Unlike Amazon and many others that try to whack as much money out of your pockets as possible yet make you work for it yourself, these people don't seem to care too much about money. Just that you will only get instructions and vague information about the procedures and requirements after you started the process, and get overviews that are confusing at best.